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Gerald M. Ackerman, Professor Emeritus, Author, Lecturer Born 1928. |
Education .
B.A. Berkeley, 1952. Five semesters in the art
historical seminar of the
Professional Career.
Lecturer, Bryn Mawr College,
1958-64. Assistant Professor, Stanford University,
1964-70. Associate Professor, Professor, and Chairman of the
Announcements
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A review of the Gérôme exhibition lately at the Getty Museum
by me will appear in the Fall issue of the American Arts Quarterly. It is
rather long, and, I think, rather interesting. It is mainly about my reaction
to the exhibition, and what I learned about Gérôme
in seeing it (several times). It will be a relief to those tired of reading
the rather nasty and old-fashioned views of American and, of French critics
of the show now in Paris. The Fall Issue can be obtained for three dollars
incl. postage from the publisher. Simply google “American
Arts Quarterly Cropsey Foundation” My illness. Some of you have heard of my accident in January last; Some of you even heard that I had died. The illness was serious, for Six months I mainly slept and lost weight. I am much recovered now, physically, have regained almost twenty pounds, and am and look quite healthy. Because there was a brain concussion, my mental faculties were disturbed, particularly the coordination between the two frontal lobes. The older the brain is, the longer it takes to heal; and at eighty-two, I have an old brain. I am still noticing improvements in my walk, my balance, my typing, my vision, and I tire easily. But I can write, give lectures, etc. without trouble. And I can read in any of the languages I know – my imaginative faculties were not disturbed. I wrote the review mentioned above since my accident. Thank you all for your concern. 25 November 2010 |
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The long-awaited Gérôme Exhibition will open up at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles on 10 October 2010. Thereafter it will go to the D'Orsay Museum in Paris for the winter. The exhibition will be a little different in each venue. It will contain three sections: painting - about 75 pictures; sculpture; and photography. A grand catalogue will be published in both English and French editions. When the price is known, it will be entered into this site. |
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The Dahesh Museum of Art is pleased to announce that the popular artist’s manual for drawing the human figure, the Charles Bargue Drawing Course, compiled and annotated by Gerald Ackerman can be ordered from its museum store. Available in a handsome hardcover edition for $95.00 (plus shipping and handling), this important book is designed to be studied by artists wishing to improve their figures, assigned by drawing teachers to their students in life classes, read carefully by art lovers who want to improve their understanding and enjoyment of drawings, consulted by art historians who want to know academic drawing was taught in the last half of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th. To order your copy today, please contact us at museumshop@daheshmuseum.org. |
THE French edition IS still available from the publisher:
ACR Édition Internationale
20 ter, rue de Bezons
Les Poissons 1196
F 92400
Tel: 01 47 88 14 92. Fax: 01 43 33 38 81
soft cover, 75.00 euros plus postage.
At last a DVD demonstrating SIGHT-SIZE TECHNIQUE. Read Review by G M Ackerman
Cast Drawing: Materials and Sight-Size Technique. Classical Ventures, DVD, 2:30 minutes. Ca $89.00. Order at www.classicalventures.com
Recent
Publication in print and available.
- Editor with Graydon Parrish of the Charles Bargue – J. L. Gérôme Drawing Course, ( Paris : ACR Édition) 2003.
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Charles
Bargue and J. L. Gérôme,
Drawing Course.
A volume of 324 pages, in a format 10 x 11 inches.
336 illustratons in color and bi-chrome. |
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The
book is a complete reprint of the fabled but rare Drawing Course (“Cours
de Dessin”)of Charles Bargue and Jean-Leon Gérôme,
published in Paris in the 1860s and 1870s. For most of the next
half-century, this set of nearly 200 masterful lithographs was copied by art
students worldwide before they attempted to draw from a live model.
This book will be valuable to a wide range of artists, students, art
historians and collectors, even as it introduces them to the
hitherto-neglected master, Charles Bargue. The
Drawing Course is separated into three sections, in an ascending order
of difficulty. The first section consists of lithographs by Bargue after casts of sculptures, mostly antique examples
that present the structure of the human body with remarkable clarity and
intelligence. The second part contains the lithographs that Bargue made after master drawings by Renaissance and
modern artists, and the third section almost 60 exemplary drawings of nude
male models. Experienced artists will recognize the skill and insight with which Bargue solved problems of drawing from nature; they will want to copy these plates to sharpen their professional skills. For art students, the Drawing Course is a practical introduction to realistic drawing based on the observation of nature, a course |
blissfully free of the usual charts and schemata
requiring memorization and often productive of stultification. For art
historians, the Drawing Course documents the longstanding tradition of
accurate draftsmanship prized by the late nineteenth-century figure painters
who stood at the convergence of classicism and realism. This
volume concludes with a biography of Charles Bargue
and a preliminary catalogue of his paintings, accompanied by reproductions of
works both located and lost. Bargue started
his career as a lithographer reproducing the drawings of commercial
illustrators for a popular market in comic, sentimental and erotic
subjects. By working with Gérôme,
and by preparing the plates for this Drawing Course, Bargue was transformed into a master painter, equipped
with the skills to match his taste, talent and ideas. He became a
master of telling details and exquisite tonal harmonies. Gerald
M. Ackerman’s collaborator on this volume is Graydon
Parrish, the figure painter well known for his widely reproduced allegory, Remorse,
Despondence, and Acceptance of an Early Death(1997-1999, |
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Paintings by Bargue: |
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1. “An academic problem: The idea of the
perfect academy,” in Gerd Lindner and
Rosario Fabrizio, editors, Realism
revisited. The Florence Academy of Art {Bad
Available from the
Am Schlachtberg 9
D 06567 Bad Frankenhausen
Tel: (034671) 619-0. Fax: (034671) 6 29 50
2. Editor, with Peter Bougie, ”The Gammell-Ackerman
letters. A correspondence of 1967-1969.” Classical Realism Journal, vol. I,
no. 1, pp18-33.
Available from the
3. “The Heroic accomplishments of R. H. Ives Gammell and The Future of American figure Painting,”
in Elizabeth Ives Hunter, editor, Transcending Vision: R. H. Gammell 1893-1981; pp81-113.
Available from the
4. La Vie et l’Oeuvre de Jean-Léon Gérôme.
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Hardback monograph” biography and catalogue raisonné of his works, over 180 colored
illustrations, 600 b/w. [The English edition of 1986 is out of
print.] |
5. Jean-Léon Gérôme.
His Life, His Work. [Les Orientalistes, no. 4].
(ACR Éditions:
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Soft-bound pocket book condensation of the biography of the larger monograph, without the catalogue raisonné; many illustrations in color. Available in America from www.budplant.com for $29.95. Available from ACR
Édition International, |
6.
American Orientalists. (ACR Éditions:
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Large quarto, cloth bound. Over 70 monographs on American Realist painters who visited and painted the Near and Middle East. Cloth bound, richly illustrated in color. Available in America from www.budplant.com for $125.00. Available in English and in French from ACR
Édition International, |
7. Les Orientalistes de l’École
britannique. (ACR Éditions internationale:
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Monographic coverage of over 1025 British Realists who visited and painte the Near and Middle East. Cloth bound, richly illustrated in color. Available in French only from ACR
Édition International, |
8. "The Bargue-Gérôme Cours de dessin: Goupil & Cie attacks a national problem," in Gérôme & Goupil: Art and Enterprise, [New York: Dahesh Museum] 2000, pp55-66; softbound.
Available at the Dahesh
Museum, New York City, 212-759-0606, ext. 235.